What is youth ministry? An unfolding thought…

Youth ministry is, in it’s broadest sense, discipleship, right? I mean really broadly speaking – everything we do in Christian youth ministry fits somewhere under that heading. We’re either leading young people, or trying to reach them in order to lead them somewhere; or at least trying to serve them in the hope of reaching them in order to lead them… right? Anybody still with me?

So if that’s the case, in order to learn how to be effective youth ministers, we need to keep an eye firmly on the best model we have for discipleship. And that, unsurprisingly, is Jesus. There’s compelling evidence to suggest that some of the disciples were actually what we’d term ‘young people’. So he was doing youth work!

So that makes me think – does our youth work look like Jesus’ youth work? Do I ever really stop to look at what Jesus’ model of discipleship was? And if I did, would it radically impact the way I approach youth ministry?

As I say, an unfolding thought, but one which won’t leave me. I know it sounds – on one level – incredibly simple and obvious, but in reality – does much of our ministry resemble His? And if not, maybe this is worth revisiting.

On this then, more later.